Tape and reel supply of electrical parts for automatic pick-and-place by a mechanical or pneumatic device onto a PCB or similar device is well known in the art. See, for example, the description in copending U.S. application Ser. No. 08/084,579. In the conventional system, a plastic carrier tape with sprocket holes along one or both edges is embossed to form a series of pockets into each of which is placed a separately made electrical component. The assembly is then covered with a plastic strip and reeled up on a reel. During assembly of the PCB, the carrier tape is unreeled, the plastic strip removed, and a pick-and-place head is used to contact and pick a surface mount technology (SMT) component out of a carrier pocket and place it in a desired position, usually under control of a computer, on one or more tinned PCB pads. The latter are usually provided with solder paste that acts as a temporary adhesive to hold the SMT part onto the PCB pads during a subsequent solder reflow process which permanently bonds and electrically connects the part to the PCB circuitry via the pads. This system has been successfully used for many years. However, there is a continuous trend toward reducing equipment costs and in particular assembly costs. The conventional embossed carrier tape-assembly process is expensive, and has the further disadvantage that it is not well suited for a mechanical pick-and-place device which has to penetrate into the cavity of the pocket in order to grip the component.
Commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 4,832,622 describes the manufacture of a continuous strip of header components by continuous extrusion or by semi-continous injection molding. In both cases, the entire header body of each component is molded of the same plastic material simultaneously with the plastic material that couples the header bodies together. In the case of the semi-continuous molding, the coupling for the header bodies is a spine member that is molded simultaneously with the header bodies and therefore must be of the same material. This scheme which works well suffers from the disadvantage of limited ability to adjust to different conditions. In particular, the scheme described in this patent is not doable for component coupling means that is preformed or constituted of a different material than that of the component body. Moreover, the link between the components and the component coupling means is typically relatively strong, which requires a special cutter to separate each component from its coupling means. Finally, the resultant product, as described, is not suitable for processing by pick-and-place devices using a suction head.